How to Use BookBub to Get on The Amazon Bestsellers List

In January, 2017, I gave away 60,301 books on Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo combined. And that’s just for one title.

I nearly died of excitement. Not only did it mean 60K people were willing to take a chance on my book, but it meant exposure, sales and several other big wins for a tiny little author like me.

How’d I do it? It took blood, sweat, tears and a little luck.

A look into my marketing strategy

To understand my marketing strategy, we have to rewind about a year.

Around March 2016, I decided to make the first book in my series, Fire in Frost, permafree.

Permafree is a term that simply means the book is always free or “permanently free.”

Though I don’t make any money on downloads of book one, the idea is to capture readers’ attention so they’ll hopefully buy the next books in the series. At that time, I had the first and second books out, and the third was almost ready.

Fast-forward to December 2016. I submitted my free book to BookBub for consideration, and I couldn’t believe it when I got the email saying they accepted my book for a feature and were planning to run my ad on January 4, 2017. This was the tenth time I’d submitted to them for that same book. (And you can only apply once a month.)

What is BookBub?

If you’re not familiar with BookBub, it’s the holy grail of ads for fiction authors.

BookBub is what made all the difference in this promotion. If you hang out with other writers long enough, you’ll discover that BookBub is THE place to advertise your books if you can.

How it works is that BookBub sends out newsletters to thousands of readers each day. You pay to get your book featured in their newsletters. The price varies depending on the price point of your book and which newsletter you want to be featured in.

They’re willing to consider permanently free books, but in general, they’re looking for book deals that are deeply discounted.

How to get a BookBub feature

While BookBub is incredibly effective for authors, it is extremely hard to get your book accepted.

I tried 10 times with my free book before finally getting accepted. I recently had another author friend say she tried 18 times before getting accepted.

That said, there are a couple of things you can do to increase your odds of having them feature your book. Here are just my suggestions:

Make it the best deal you can. BookBub wants to give their readers the best deals, so try to offer your book free (if it’s the first in the series) or for $0.99. They usually won’t feature anything above $2.99, and they’re unlikely to feature your book at that price point if it’s always priced there.

Try with the first book in a series. BookBub seems to like first in the series because (as I understand it) they will make money off affiliate sales of your other books if their readers buy the rest of the series.

Make your book available on all platforms and in all territories. BookBub wants deals that appeal to all their readers. Although they sometimes feature books that are exclusive to Amazon, you typically have a better chance if your book is available on all platforms (Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Google Play) and if the deal is available in all territories (US, UK, Australia, India, and Canada).

Have an amazing cover. Believe it or not, readers really do judge books by their covers, and so do the people over at BookBub. If you have a less than great cover, it’s worth considering a redesign, not just for BookBub but because it will help in all your promos.

Finish your series. BookBub finally accepted my deal once the entire series was available for sale on all platforms. This isn’t a guarantee that they’ll accept your book, but it helps because readers don’t want to wait around for the next one, so it makes your deal more appealing.

Gather reviews. BookBub doesn’t have a minimum amount of reviews they require, but more reviews give the impression that your book is more popular. It also gives BookBub’s editors an idea of how readers will respond to your book. You can gather reviews by including a call to action at the end of your book, giving away free copies, or encouraging reviews from people who’ve already read the book.

Talk up your book. BookBub features a comment section when you submit your deal. Use it to talk up your book. Mention if it’s won any awards or what editorial reviewers or big-name authors have said about it. I mentioned that my series had over 200 5-star reviews on Goodreads (at the time).

Be flexible. BookBub is in such high demand that if you need a certain date, they might already have it full. Instead, consider planning your promotion around them. They’ll ask you if your date is flexible or not. Be open to anything, and it will increase your chances of getting a feature.

Keep submitting. Submit as often as you can, and don’t give up!

How to leverage a BookBub ad

After paying for the ad, I knew I needed to devise a game plan.

I wanted to make the most out of this feature as I could. I applied to multiple other ad sites and newsletter services and got accepted to most of them. I planned to run ads that whole week so that it would help boost my Amazon rankings. Most of the ads ended up running on Monday or Tuesday, and the BookBub feature ran on Wednesday. Here’s how my investment broke down:

BookBub: $115*

EBook Soda: $15

Book Goodies: $17.50

The Fussy Librarian: $5

Reading Deals: Free

ReadFree.ly: Free

EReader News Today: $35

Many Books: $25

*BookBub ad prices vary depending on your category and price point. I ran my ad for a free book in the Teen & Young Adult category.

I also increased my Amazon ad spending to $10 per day and ended up spending $39.68 during the week of the promo. I also ran Facebook ads for $10 per day and spent $43.69 during the week of the promo. For other free promos, some friends agreed to share the book in their newsletters, and I also shared the freebie with mine.

When all was said and done, I spent $295.87 to get my freebie out to as many people as possible. These promos catapulted my free book from around #2,000 in the free Amazon Kindle store to #7 in the entire store. I hit #1 of all free teen books on Kindle.

That high Amazon ranking further increased my exposure and kept the series selling really well the entire month (and sales are still coming in!). Overall in January, I had 33,485 downloads on the Amazon US site, 8,491 downloads on Amazon’s international sites, and 18,325 downloads between Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo.

What did I get out of this?

Profit: You might be wondering why I would do all this just for a free book. After all, I’m not making any money off it, right? Well, that’d be the case if I only had the one book. By reaching readers with the first book, sales of the second, third, and fourth books also spiked. By the end of the promo week, I’d already made my money back and more from sales of my other books.

Reviews: After running the promo, my reviews spiked. I’ve received well over 50 more reviews on book one on Amazon, and I’ve now exceeded over 1,000 reviews of the series on Goodreads. All this translates into even more exposure.

Bestseller Status: Toward the end of the month, I decided to run a quick $0.99 sale on books two, three, and four. Since the sales boost from this promo had already increased my ranking, this extra sale helped push my books to #1 in their Amazon categories. I also made the top 100 author list for teens. Granted, it’s no New York Times bestseller, and I won’t be bragging about being an Amazon bestseller on my book covers or anything, but it was a personal goal of mine that I was happy to hit.

Have you ever considered giving BookBub a try? Let us know in the comments below.

12 comments

Very helpful article! I’d never even heard of BookBub or most of the others mentioned. Advice on how to use these resources and especially sharing your specific costs and the outcomes are the kinds of things that help aspiring authors feel more empowered to move forward. Thank you!

Thank you so much for sharing this, Alicia! I only have book one out in my series, so I will have to wait to tap into the power of BookBub. But, I have run promotions using some of the other sites you listed — and I, too, saw a bump in rank and reviews.

I also appreciate you showing how you leveraged your BookBub promo by using the other sites. I would not have thought to do that. I’m saving your post for future reference. (Yes, it’s that helpful!) 🙂

The author writes about children’s books. The customer could be adults buying for children. Genre plays an important role. Also these days recognition needs to be given to the role of Kindle or e-books. Many avid readers are electronic readers. I fully understand the appeal. One problem I have with free books is that when you already have readers prepared to pay the advertised price and have already done so, will they not feel cheated? Time frame is also important. Your novel can be historically interesting and within a year have become of interest, although not immediately on publication. The best seller as featured by mainstream publishers has an army of advertisers and newspaper behind its success. A reader, who asks you to write a sequel or who comments that they enjoyed the story, or reading about the characters. Perhaps the scene descriptions and the storyline. These results are rewarding. I do appreciate that the author has to wear the hat of marketer and sales person to promote his/her novels. Not sure all genres benefit from hand outs, but further down the line, after a number of published novels this might be appropriate to obtain new readership. The author perhaps should not say no, not ever, to free books!!

Thanks so much for sharing this info. i have tried BookBub several times and was denied. I’m beginning to think they run a scam. For the outrageous prices they charge some authors, I’m really surprised that anyone tries them. I may give it another shot down the line, perhaps, when their prices are more reasonable for the working writer. Though, I sincerely doubt that they take on writers that aren’t “right” in their eyes.

I waited until I had book 2 out to make my first book free. I can see some benefits of making it free before the others are out. For example, it can help you gather reviews and might get some people to sign up for your mailing list. But it’s also easy for people to quickly forget about you. I think it’s more effective to have book 1 free when you have a few more books out in the series so people will go on to buy the others right away. But it really depends on your goals. Hope that helps! 🙂